In Other Words...

In Other Words... aims to synthesize existing research on a range of topics and to present factual information in a narrative both accessible and entertaining. Topics addressed will likely focus broadly on evolution, featuring posts on behavior, cognition, language, and humor.

Of course, weight loss also requires an energy imbalance: moving
more than you eat. What makes weight loss
so difficult is your body responds very strongly to this kind of imbalance. Not
only are you struck with hunger pangs, but your body actually reduces your
resting energy expenditure to compensate for the decrease in energy coming in.

Why does it do this?

Because for most of human history, this kind of
imbalance—moving all the time to find limited food—was a major problem.

Unfortunately for us modern humans, when you eat more than
you move, your body’s response isn’t nearly as strong. This, again, is the slow
and steady weight gain. Your body requiring you to expend more energy with each
visit to the fridge.

Worldwide, there are 1.1 billion overweight adults. Given
the changes to our diet and activity levels over the last decades, the obesity epidemic
should be even worse. So the human body is
adapting. But we’re demanding a sprint when evolution tends to crawl.

So how can we solve this problem, without leaving our bodies
to their evolutionary devices?

More physical activity.

Ever notice how that friend of yours who exercises every day can
seemingly eat whenever and whatever without significant changes in weight?

Here’s the scientific explanation:

There’s a line in the sand when it comes to physical
activity. Cross it and you enter a zone where—without expanding your waistline—your
body can easily regulate increased intakeà la your Thanksgiving feast.

If you fail to reach that line and you don’t want to upsize your wardrobe, you’ll have to rely on
unsustainable diets (key word: unsustainable).

Here’s an unsavory statistic: over the long-term, one-third
to two-thirds of dieters regain more weight than they initially lost.

As the publication reports, it’s all because human physiology is biased
toward finding energy balance at high intake and high expenditure.

In short, halting obesity requires more than just watching
how much we eat. It requires watching how much we move. Because, while dieting
can help you drop the pounds, physical activity is what will keep you from
picking them back up.

Reproduced with permission from ShareWIK. For more obesity and general health and wellness content, follow them on Twitter @ShareWIK.

Monday, September 9, 2013

What do science writer Virginia Morell and animal scientists
Frans de Waal and Brian Hare all have in common?

They each took time out of their busy schedules to speak in
my home town at the Decatur Book Festival.

Each of them also had a bit to say about changing
perspectives in the field of animal cognition. These changes involve more than
just which species are of particular interest and what specific questions scientists
wish to investigate. The very language
we use to describe scientific discovery is undergoing transformation.

Anthropomorphism — attributing human characteristics to
non-humans — has typically met great resistance. Some philosophers and older
scientists may still balk at a scientist using the words teach and learn to describe
specific interactions between — for example — ants.

Instead, they might favor a vaguer description of the
action, semantically separating the human act of teaching from the ant’s transference
of information — whether intentional or not — through exhibition in the
coincidental proximity of at least one individual who previously had yet to demonstrate
possession of (but may very well have already possessed) said information.

Studying the capacities of animals seems to have been a
means of reinforcing the misconception that we humans are evolution’s
masterpiece. It was the science of isolating exactly which features of humanity
make us so special. It was the data we needed to justify a generous pat on the
back.

But the pinnacle of progress we are not.

Ms. Morell’s book Animal Wise attempts to summarize the great wealth of cognition research that
covers a huge variety of species across the animal kingdom. In her talk, she
touched upon laughing rats, border collies with expansive vocabularies, and the
aforementioned ant pedagogy.

Our “uniquely human” capabilities (if I may use quotation
marks ironically) surface again and again — in related species and in species so
distant our common ancestors would’ve likely resembled some sort of worm.

Intelligence does not exist on a continuum, a point Dr.
Hare emphasized in his talk. We humans don’t preside at the top of the animal
kingdom because there is no “top.” How would you even quantify something as
broad as intelligence? Sure, you can devise a test of memory, or a test of
empathy, or a test of communicative ability. But how do these intelligent
traits stack up against each other?

Hare instead proposes that each species — even individuals
within a species — have their own cognitive
profile. Depending on its environment, a species may favor and rely upon
certain flavors of intelligence while others are diminished.

At the book festival promoting, The Genius of Dogs, which he co-wrote with his wife, science writer
Vanessa Woods, Hare spoke predominantly about his canine research. Historically
scientists regarded dogs as artificial, the circumstances in which they evolved
unnatural. But, again, the perspective of the field has changed. Scientists are
no longer studying animals so we can put the fragile human ego on a shelf overlooking
the kingdom, now they are studying animals so they can see how we fit in among
them.

Now, studying animals can truly help us understand the
evolutionary path of our own species. For Hare this means dogs are fair game. What
better animal to provide a window into human evolution than that which has
co-evolved with us? If we can
understand how they became like us, said
Hare, we can understand how we became
like us.

In the last decade animal cognition research has really branched
out. Our primate relatives are no longer the center of attention, with dogs, birds,
dolphins, elephants, and a host of invertebrates stealing some of the
limelight.

Still, renowned primatologist Dr. de Waal — arguably one of
the driving forces behind the changing field — has had no difficulty pushing primate
work into new territories. His more recent work has focused on emotions, empathy,
and morality.

If likening an insect to a teacher causes a stir, imagine
the kind of opposition a claim for ape morality would meet.

De Waal — whose newest book is called The Bonobo and the Atheist— drew attention to the changing opinions
on morality’s origin. Initially the belief was that God gave us morality, said
de Waal. Then it was reason, then it was science. He rejects even this third
view, claiming instead that morality isn’t given to us at all. It comes from
within.

What about religion, you ask? Well, at this point, scientists
have yet to observe its existence in any species outside of our own. Unlike those
basic moral tendencies, on the timescale of evolution, it’s a much more recent
phenomenon. For these very reasons, it’s hard to imagine that religion is the
father of morality. The more probable relationship casts religion as an engineer
and morality as the material at its disposal.

Taken together, scientists studying animal cognition are
making it harder than ever to disregard our common identity as animals. My opinion,
this is a good thing. All too often, the upper limit of human self-identification
stops short at a nationality. I’m more than an American. I’m a human. A human animal.

Friday, August 9, 2013

Rarely is an
explanation of why something is
funny, funny in and of itself. Attempts at eliciting laughs by dissecting a
joke often rely on the “it’s funny ‘cause it’s [blank]” formula, with “it’s
funny ‘cause it’s true” seated at the head of the table.

Surely I’m wrong, but
I credit the first mainstream usage of this line to Steve Pepoon who penned the
words for Homer Simpson back in 1991, in the only episode of the
series he ever wrote. Over the last 22 years, this line or a variant of it has
popped up across the comedy landscape from the 2001 flop, Corky Romano, to a season
two episode of The Big Bang Theoryin ‘09. While the explaining-a-joke
joke may be stumbling about on tired legs, there is certainly merit to the
thoughtful dissection of jokes without
laughter as the end goal.

If you don’t disagree,
read the following. It’s not funny
‘cause it’s not supposed to be.

_______________________________________________________________

On a Radiolab podcast titled Loops, Jad Abumrad and Robert Krulwich introduce a comedy bit of
Kurt Braunohler and Kristen Schaal’s which relies heavily on repetition in
finding its laughs. Check out the clip below:

What makes repetition so funny, or at the very least
amusing?

The NPR podcast points out that there is something comical about the “Kristen Schaal is a horse” bit
right out of the gate. Combine the cadence of Braunohler’s voice as he spits
out the bizarre lyric with Schaal’s unorthodox horse dance, and it’s odd-ball
humor at its finest. Initially, it works in as much as it’s piqued the
audience’s curiosity; they digest it as the set-up for an imminent punchline.

But there is no punchline, either imminent or off in the
distance. In some ways, the audience has been cheated, the comic-audience
contract breached. But, instead of making amends, the comedy duo force-feeds
the crowd the same five lines. Then, they do it again. Repetition should kill jokes. Then, they do it again. With each occasion of hearing the same joke.
And again. The joke becomes less and
less striking. And again. Consider the
“it’s funny because it’s [blank]” line. But instead of coming across as tired,
the repetitive joke comes off as positively insistent.

What’s interesting is that, when played for laughs, repetition
like this ultimately seems to get them. Just not in a conventional way. The
absurdity of the act makes you wonder why,
and then it makes you mutter why. It
makes you question why so much that
you may consider asking why not, and
then, eventually, it makes you laugh.

Speculating about the mechanism behind this particular kind
of humor, I couldn’t help liken the reaction to that of a baby responding to a
game of peekaboo, with its drawn out and repetitive nature. As it turns out
this association wasn’t unwarranted. Thomas Veatch outlines, in his theory
published in the International Journal of Humor Research, that the reason
babies are entertained by peekaboo is that they don’t yet understand object
permanence (that objects—including people—continue to exist even when you can’t
see them). So, for babies, every time your face pops out from behind your
hands, you are violating their expectations, you are violating the principle
that exists in their minds that when your face disappears behind your hands it literally disappears.

According to Veatch’s theory, all humor is derived from situations
in which one can simultaneously feel that a principle is being violated and
that the same principle is being upheld. Laughter is the result, as we
recognize—albeit with suspicion—that everything is as it should be.

What a repetitive joke seems to do differently is that it
makes the joke itself the violated
principle. Depending on how attached you are to the principle that a joke will
follow a standard set-up > punchline
format, you may or may not find situations that violate this principle to be
funny. If you are too attached to the principle, then you may find “Kristen
Schaal is a horse” offensive. If you are too detached from the principle, you
may find the bit entirely unremarkable.

Repetitive jokes may simultaneously be the most deserving of
an explanation and the hardest to
explain. It may very well be that it’s wondering why they make us laugh that actually makes us laugh. It’s from the very
bewilderment as to why it’s funny
that it is so funny. In other words, it’s beyond explanation. It’s so very absurd, that we find funny our
own attempts to analyze it under a critical light.

By performing live, Braunohler and Schaal have a leg-up over
the king of repetitive laughs, Seth MacFarlane, who, relegated to his animated
worlds (Family Guy, American Dad, The Cleveland Show) is free to exploit
repetition without physically exerting himself (see below). Braunohler and
Schaal on the other hand, are exhausted and it shows. Lucky for them, it only
elevates the humor as the hoarseness of Braunohler’s voice surpasses the
horseness of Schaal’s dance.